Pecos Bill

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Walt Disney's Pecos Bill atop Widowmaker

Pecos Bill a legendary American cowboy, immortalized in numerous tall tales living in the Old West during the American westward expansion, considered to be an example of fakelore.

Like many tall tales, Pecos Bill stories involve combinations of super-human feats of courage and prowess (such as riding a cyclone like a bronco and using a rattlesnake for a whip as well) and explaining natural phenomena (such as why coyotes howl at the moon, digging the Rio Grande, and how the Painted Desert becamed so colorful.)

According to the legend, Pecos Bill was traveling in a covered wagon as an infant when he fell out unnoticed by the rest of his family near the Pecos River. He was taken in by a female coyote and raised with her other pups, thus explaining his exceptional skills.

He grew up to become a cowboy and has a horse, Widowmaker, and a love interest, Slue-Foot Sue, both are equally as idealised as Pecos Bill.

After a courtship with Slue-Foot Sue where, among other things, Pecos Bill shoots all the stars from the sky, except for one which becomes the Lone Star, he proposes to Sue who insisted on riding Widowmaker sometime before, during or after the wedding depending on variations in the story.

Widowmaker, jealous of no longer having Bill's undivided attention, bounces Sue off, who lands on her bustle which begins bouncing her higher and higher, eventually hitting her head on the moon following a failed attempt to lasso her. After Slue-Foot Sue had been bouncing for days, Pecos-Bill realized that she would starve to death, so he put her out of her misery by shooting her as an act of mercy. Though it is said that Bill was married many times, he never did recover from the loss of Sue.

The stories were written by Edward O'Reilly in the Saga of Pecos Bill, published in 1923. He was a late addition to the "big man" idea of characters like Paul Bunyan or Iron John. A segment within the Disney animated feature, Melody Time in 1948 adapts the legend. It begins with Roy Rogers and his friends singing "Blue Shadows on the Trail". Soon after the song, a coyote howls at the moon. Young Disney actors Bobby Driscoll and Luana Patten ask why the coyotes howl at the moon. Roy Rogers explains it's all because of Pecos Bill and is shocked when the children don't know the tall tale of the great American legend. Through songs, Roy Rogers and his friends relate the story of Pecos Bill, Slue Foot Sue and Widowmaker. The Disney adaptation, omits Bill shooting Sue, who lands on the moon, rather than hitting her head on it. Devastated by the loss of Sue, Bill returns to live among the coyotes, and begins howling at the moon in grief over his loss. The other coyotes follow suit out of sympathy and continue the practice to this day.